


Missing Pieces

by StevetheIcecube



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles X
Genre: Amnesia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 08:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14280870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StevetheIcecube/pseuds/StevetheIcecube
Summary: When he woke up in the rain, everything was new, and he had no idea what he said when a name rolled off his tongue.





	Missing Pieces

If he was being honest, he had no idea what he was saying when the syllables that became his name fell off his tongue. Leo. Even as time went on, he wasn't sure if he'd managed to pluck the right name out of thin air or if he'd just been testing his voice and those were the first sounds he'd managed to form. He wasn't even sure if it mattered; it wasn't like anyone knew him as anything else.

No one in New Los Angeles recognised him. No one knew him from the crew of the ship. No one knew his name (no surprise there) and they couldn't find his face in the database. Lin theorised, at least initially, that he hadn't been awake on the White Whale but for some reason got separated from everything else in the crash, but his face couldn't be found anywhere else in the still sleeping passengers in the data. From there, they entertained the idea that his mim looked different to his real face, but there was just flat out no data stored in his mimeosome.

There were no explanations as to where he had come from. He had woken in the rain and left a stasis pod and had spoken a name he didn't know to a person he didn't recognise. None of it should have been possible. He was meant to be being controlled by a person in stasis, but the person in stasis couldn't tell him a damn thing about how to use a phone or what the hell a dog was (that had been an embarrassing experience and it was one he never wanted to repeat). That wasn't meant to be possible.

As time went on, he was meant to stop stressing about it. He had new memories. He gained a vague basis for his existence, and that was meant to be enough until they got to the Lifehold and worked out what had gone on with the person controlling him from there. But then he started to wonder. Would the person who existed as him now be completely different from the one sealed away? Would he gain new old memories, or would the ones he'd created be replaced? Was it fair to burden him with a lifetime he didn't remember living, or to remove the new person he had created? Did he want to know who he had been? Once the old him was back, would the current him even be allowed to keep living? Would he be permitted to live a life as a pale imitation?

He didn't want to think about it. The thoughts pelted him with more consistency than any xenoform bullet and sometimes they hurt a damn sight more. He couldn't run away from thoughts. He couldn't kill thoughts. He couldn't do anything to them except wish them away and hope that no one had any idea he was having them at all.

After one particularly humiliating incident involving himself, Frye, and a discussion of history (and religion) in the wrong place (just outside the church) at decidedly the wrong time (when everyone was leaving a service), he'd gone to find somewhere quiet to stew in his misery, but after about ten minutes he heard the sound of someone descending the steps to the water level of NLA. Within moments, Lin sat down next to him.

"I heard you were chased by an angry crowd of believers," she said. Straight to the point, then. 

"How did you know?"

"Just about half the population of the city attend that service," she said. "But Hope told me. She was worried that you might not be safe out here on your own."

"I'm always safe," he said. That wasn't really true, but he was usually safe inside the city, at least.

"Are you ever sad that you don't have memories of this kind of stuff?" She asked. "Because you sure get into some tricky situations when you get stuff wrong."

"I try not to worry about it," he said. "More important things to think about. How we're going to survive, finding the Lifehold, working out how to stop you from cooking Tatsu..."

"...and boys," she said with a grin. "You spend a lot of time thinking about boys." Leo flushed a little at her words. "I get what you mean. But you're allowed to have other feelings, you know?" He nodded. "And you're allowed to talk about them." Hint, hint, clearly. Alright then. 

"I'm not so bothered about them not being there, because I can learn from stuff like this and get better," he said. "I'm more concerned about what happens when my old memories are available to me. Will I be the same person?"

"You sound like Lao," she said with a small groan. "When you have your memories back, I'm sure you'll still be the same Leo who swoons every time he gets near Phog. Don't you worry about that."

Leo smiled. "I don't know," he said. "What if my past self was married to someone else, either someone who is also in the Lifehold or someone who died back on Earth? I wouldn't be attracted to both, I don't think, but maybe I would. I don't know."

"Your old memories are probably gone for good, if that's a comfort," Lin said, "but it probably isn't." She was right there. "Maybe this is a stupid way to see it, but I'm happy you're here with us now. We can look for all that weird memory stuff later."

Maybe it wasn't the most comforting idea long term, but Lin's words then helped. It made him, the new him, feel valued in a world that had previously not even known he existed. And that more than anything could get him through the pain of the possibilities the future held.


End file.
